“Yes, sir, I thought it must be,” said the man.
“Time goes when one is interested. There, have a cigar. Light up. We have not done a bad’s day work. Can you lead back pretty straight?”
“Oh yes, sir, I can manage that,” said the man confidently; but he had been trudging along, sending his and the young man’s shadows grotesquely dancing upon the roof for quite an hour and a half before the end of the main artery of the mine was reached, with the sloping shaft up to the daylight—“to grass,” Sturgess termed it—but here there was no response to their hails for nearly an hour, the men having gone.
“The scoundrels!” Reed cried at last. “Well, it’s risky work, but we can’t stop down here. We must either go back into the mine, try for the other shaft, which may be climbable, or you or I must go up that rope.”
“Who’s to climb a rope like that, sir?” growled Sturgess; “and how do we know that the end’s properly fastened?—There they are!”
For a faint murmur of voices was heard from far above, and now an answer came to their hail, and a minute later a voice shouted—
“All right below?”
“Yes,” cried Reed. “Get in the loop, my man.—Ahoy there! haul up.”
The rope tightened and Sturgess was raised from his feet and went up slowly, leaving Reed below in the darkness.
But it was all light to the young engineer, whose tired face shone with joy and excitement.